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Excerpts from Mike Czuba’s REPRISE were presented on March 8th by The Red Theatre in Chicago – having placed as a runner-up in their international playwriting competition. The staged reading of selected scenes was directed by Maria Burnham. Featuring: Mark Pracht as Steven, Erin Haddock as Joanne and Paul Tinsley as Peter.

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Dancing Monkey is very pleased to announce that on April 20th, 2015 (S)cientist Mike Czuba’s original play REPRISE will be given a full staged-reading as part of the LIVING ROOM SERIES at The Blank Theatre in Los Angeles, CA.

REPRISE was an Honourable Mention in the 2012 Alberta Playwriting Competition as well as a runner-up for the Pam Dunn award at Infinitheatre in Montreal. (AD Guy Sprung). In Oct 2011 the play received a staged reading as part of the Alberta Playwrights Network reading series at Lunchbox Theatre in Calgary, directed by Gail Hanrahan.

**REPRISE was also a runner-up in Chicago’s Red Theatre 2015 playwriting competition. From over 500 international submissions – REPRISE was top three and will have an excerpt read later this year…

“Well crafted… Reprise demonstrates a very sophisticated structure and a very musical fluidity.” Iris Turcott

Logline: Upon learning of his father’s death musician Steven Booker spends an agonizing and fantastical day and night trying to dismiss the man he hated so much but knew so little.

Plot: Through a series of memories and the reality of his current situation, Steven Booker discovers that he is very much his father’s son. As hard as he tries to avoid it, only by going to his father’s funeral will he be able to move forward and become the man he wants to be and not the man he has become. The story is structured like a song with music used to propel and increase the power of the narrative without removing the audience from it. Hearing a Fender Rhodes piano being played alone on stage is magical. Hearing the memories of a father not understood can be universal. The work is contemporary, naturalistic and surreal with an aesthetic that is understood with fantasy never too far away.

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(S)cientist Mike Czuba is honoured to be a part of the premiere episode of Kelsy Norman‘s new podcast ‘Do The Knowledge‘.
This is looking to be special series by a creator and host who has a genuine curiosity about how this crazy ass world of ours works.
Check it out and bookmark the link to stay tuned for future episodes.

The history books all suggest Alfred Jarry died from a combination of malnutrition and a super-human consumption of alcohol. After Us The Savage God will offer another hypothesis – Time travel. With his life long interest in science and cycling, Alfred Jarry secretly managed to build a time machine in his decrepit apartment. He used the knowledge acquired in his travels through time to write his avant-guard and at times incomprehensible plays and novels and in the process create a series of unbelievable characters. One of these creations, the beast known as UBU, decided he would like to become real and tormented Jarry for much of his adult life. UBU inserted himself into Jarry’s world so much that the fabric of reality began to tear apart. Was UBU created by Jarry, or was Jarry created by UBU?

The action of the play takes place in the final months of Jarry’s life (but time is beginning to be difficult to measure) as he struggles to finish his Neo-Scientific novel; Exploits and Opinions of Doctor Faustroll – Pataphysician. Jarry, traveling in and out of time and losing track of it, must battle his nemesis, his creation, UBU – or is it simply a projection of himself. The supporting cast is made up of Rachilde, a writer in her own right and editor of the Mercure de France. She is struggling to save Jarry from himself, to stop him from (literally) killing himself. UBU’s Conscience (taken from UBU Cuckold), who lives in a suitcase, valiantly tries to give UBU advice that won’t kill Jarry. Also there is Ellen and Herbert, a corrupt and amoral politician and his equally corrupted Lady Macbeth-esque wife from the future (present). These two vile characters represent all that Jarry was trying to change in his own time.

**Warning: Contains Adult language, fluids and depravity.

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Dancing Monkey Laboratories is a performance collective lead by scientists Mike Czuba, Melissa Tuplin, Nathaniel Schmidt and Larry Lamont. We are interested in researching, exploring, discovering and deconstructing what (T)heatre can be by creating new works that speak to diverse audiences. Dancing Monkey wishes to use its platform to continue to foster, encourage and collaborate with established artists and hidden talents across Canada to create a theatrical experience that offers universal content, challenging aesthetics, while building bridges into other artistic communities. Founded in Montreal, Quebec, Dancing Monkey now also has a laboratory in Calgary, Alberta.

Creating new forms, such as the "Night Play", Dancing Monkey Laboratories is pleased to be following in the footsteps and dreams of our Nocturlogical predecessors. If you have to ask if something exists, it already does, if it is all lies, it is also completely true – Nocturlogically speaking.

dancingmonkeylab@gmail.com

Nathaniel Schmidt’s Debut Album ‘SATELLITES’ Now Available on Itunes

Mike Czuba’s play ‘I AM I’ is available @ Original Works Publishing.

"The characters in Mike Czuba’s new tragi-comedy “I AM I” may state in frustration that they hate postmodernism, but the show owns its very appeal to this fragmented, and yet strangely cohesive genius of narrative." Lucian Tion, Amsterdam Fringe - 2013